Study Abroad
Day 41
February 27th, 2006
10:45 PM

I really do apologize for the lack of posts last week (and for the lack of e-mails in the last few). I hope the tales of Salamanca were satisfying enough.

I’ll leave out details from last week for now and focus on…

CARNAVALE IN CADIZ!

We left on Thursday evening, taking a bus from Madrid with Amy, Danielle, Robin, Katherine and Morgan. The ride was about 7 hours long; the first 2 ½ hours was spent panicking that we wouldn’t get a potty break. But we stopped to pee twice, so all was not lost. Very little sleep was had, however, and we screeched to a stop in Jerez de la Frontera at 5:00 in the morning with our necks stiff from head bobbing.

Having booked rooms at two different hostels, we split into two groups. For Amy, Danielle and I, our next hour or so was spent wandering the dark streets of Jerez looking for the hostel Amy had booked for us. With both a lack of direction and a lack of Amy, it was just before 6 when we finally arrived at the door of the Hotel de la Tierra Jerez. The desk guy let us in, but told us our room wouldn’t be ready until midday. He let us sit on the couches in the lobby, but after he noticed us all lying down to go to sleep he asked us to sit up. At about 7:30, the desk clerk replacing the guy (aka, our guardian angel) convinced a maid to get our room ready early, and we crashed immediately.

We were able to get up and get ourselves together at about 2 for some lunch. We found Amy, Morgan and Katherine eating outside at a restaurant and found a table there ourselves. It took at least an hour for our food to get to us, but it was pretty nice to be able to just sit out in the sun. After lunch we explored Jerez a little bit, walking around and getting fairly lost. On our way back we stopped at the grocery store to assemble a feast for dinner. We spent the evening eating it and watching Growing Pains in Spanish and some Olympics.

I hadn’t seen a bit of the Olympics since I’d been here, as we don’t really have a T.V. handy (though there is one in a random classroom on the second floor). We watched a few hours (yes, hours) of curling, after which I can still say I don’t know how to play. We did enjoy yelling “Scrub! Scrub! Scrub!” at the Canadians, though. We caught some figure skating, too, which is my favorite. It was just the exhibition show, but still fun to watch. At least until the creepy pair from the USA team came out wearing leather and leopard print. Then we turned it off and went to sleep.

In the morning we got up early but took our time getting ready. Glorious showers were had (nothing like the crap lukewarm showers at the Fund) and we watched some cross-country skiing. We packed up our stuff and hauled it over to the other girls’ hostel, where we planned to leave it overnight. We all got into our costumes and paraded to the train station. 4 of us were birds (Danielle, Amy, Morgan and Katherine), I had a butterfly mask (but otherwise resembled a butterfly in no way) and Robin was a pirate.

We took the 2:00 train from Jerez into Cadiz, staring panic-stricken at the rain streaming down the windows. As we went, the train continued to fill up with others in costumes heading into the Carnavale Capital. When we arrived in Cadiz it was gray and foreboding, but only just sprinkling. We walking down the main street and found a place to have some lunch. As we continued to explore the streets the weather got darker and darker. By the time night fell and the party really started, it was practically a hurricane.

But that didn’t stop anybody. All of the normal Carnavale activities (parades, concerts, etc.) were cancelled because of the weather, but the streets still stuffed themselves full of people in every costume imaginable:
-Tetris bricks, who walked around singing the Tetris theme song and fitting themselves together
-tons of nuns, priests and a couple of popes
-A washer and dryer duo (“I liked the washer much better than the dryer,” decided Danielle.
-“Duff Man”
-Giant cardboard cookies, who handed out real cookies to those who asked (I did!)
-a whole team of “Where’s Waldos?”
-men dressed as Flamenco dancers
-bumblebees
-vikings
-on and on…

It poured on us, but we were still out on the streets of Cadiz for over 14 hours. We danced to drum music, talked to the Spaniards and circled the main streets in the rain. For the last six hours I couldn’t feel my feet. By the time we left, we had to wade through piles and piles of garbage that filled the streets. We lost Katherine and Morgan, who went home early, but gained John and Laura (from the Fund).

I discovered a few things:
Drunk Amy steals food off carts
Drunk Danielle admires boys with braces
Drunk Robin blames the entire Spanish population for not having a word in Spanish that means “belligerent.”
Drunk John is…just as dignified as regular John.

It was absolutely like nothing I have ever seen: thousands of people in costume roaming Cadiz all night long was amazing to see. And, if you haven’t noticed, college students in general are absolutely obsessed with the “experience.” I can’t tell you how many times I heard “When are you ever going to be 19 years old and at Carnavale again?” And I had to answer truthfully: never.

But (and here comes the lesson learned portion of the blog). Other phrases I kept hearing all night were “This is chaos” and “I’m cold and I’m wet…and I don’t even care!” And I wonder: how is it that this quest for an “experience” can completely wipe out any sense of the reality—that we were cold and wet and wandering the streets for 14 hours? I have trouble with the “college mentality” sometimes, the idea that I have to go be wild and crazy and like it, or at least discover that I like it.

Because I don’t like it, really. I don’t like crowds, where I’m so short people don’t see me and they step on me and push me into things. I don’t like activities that are centered entirely on stumbling around drunk. I’m as open to these things as I can possibly manage—I went to Carnavale! But every time I find myself learning a lesson I already knew: that I’m not a very good “college student.” I just want to hang out with friends, see a good movie (or a bad one!), have a good conversation, learn something new and go to bed a reasonable hour!

We shivered, half frozen and entirely miserable at the bus stop for an hour, waiting for a bus back to Jerez at 5:00 in the morning. We jogged back to Amy’s hotel room in a daze, so cold we couldn’t see straight. Putting my pajama pants on was the sweetest experience…yeah, ever. And dry shoes! Oh, yes. The hotel guy yelled at us for having more than 3 in a room, so Danielle, Amy and I decided we’d better hang out at the train station until our 8:30 train left.

The train ride back was short (5 hours) and smooth. We all slept a little. We were back at the Fund by 3 (stopping at McDonalds, where we broke our pact and I had the best Big Mac of my life). I took a short nap and went to Mass. Different priest this week who was less of a mumbler (but not much less). Spanish Catholics are serious folk—I didn’t even get a smile during the sign of peace. Though I did really want to laugh out loud when the priest ended his homily with “Got it? OK, stand up.”

We went to bed early in hopes of sleeping off an entire weekend of madness. I hope we succeeded, because this week is midterms. Ha.